Dizzy highlights the strange oversight by left-wing blogs like LabourList and Left Foot Forward. Whereas conservative-leaning Dizzy is happy to condemn both wee Dougie Alexander and George Osborne for charging taxpayers for their chimney sweeping, Labour’s Alex Smith and Will Straw only condemn Osborne for his Dickensian ways. Labour’s election campaign strategist Dougie Alexander must have an invisible magical chimney sweep that they can’t see. This example seems to Guido to show in a nutshell why the unpopular end of the blogosphere is unpopular, it is just too slavish to the official party line to be interesting. It is a sign of weakness not strength.

Left-wing and Green bloggers have been banging on about how Iain Dale and other Tory bloggers don’t toe the official Conservative Party policy line on on the environment, as if they think the honest heterodoxy of the Tory blogosphere is a bug, not a feature. If people want to read on-message press releases, they can go to the official party websites. There is a lesson here.